The best wet and dry vacuums: Make cleaning quick and easy

The V15s Detect Submarine is essentially the V15 Detect with an additional wet roller head, making it a modular, complete home floor cleaning system that’s effective and easy to use. Buy it and, as well as the Submarine head, you’ll get the Digital Motorbar cleaner head for carpets, the Fluffy Optic cleaner head for hard floors, the Hair Screw tool, a crevice tool and a combination tool with a wide nozzle and a brush.

You can get up to 60 minutes of use from the battery, which recharges in 4.5 hours. Plus, the battery is swappable, so you can buy a second one to give yourself more cleaning time.

The Submarine head can hold up to 300ml of water, which will give you 1,000 square feet of cleaning. You can add diluted detergent to the water for extra cleaning power, but not bleach, and there’s no steam function. Like many other floor cleaners in this round-up, the Submarine is self-propelling, which is good news as it’s heavy at 8.3lbs/3.75kg – more with a full water tank. You’ll also need to keep the trigger pressed down in use, which adds a bit of extra strain.

Our only caveat in terms of its effectiveness is that the Submarine head is best for light, regular mopping. It’s not ideal for tackling really grimy floors. The other caveat, of course, is price.

One of the best things about this model – and what sets it apart from many rivals in this chart – is that you can use it on all types of hard flooring, plus rugs and carpet. It also vacuums and mops at once, giving you complete cleaning in a single swipe.

Another excellent feature is its ‘FurFinder’ headlights, which light up hairballs and dirt in shadowy spots, making mess unmissable.

It’s easy to use and has separate clean and dirty water tanks, so you’ll have confidence in your cleaning. It’s suitable for both spot cleaning and deep cleans, and we found it did a great job at getting up pet hair trodden into carpet.

Its maximum run time is only 25 minutes, which is less than some rivals, and as the water tanks are fairly small, you’ll need to empty them at least once during a bigger clean. Nor will it clean all the way to the edges of a room, so you’ll need to hang onto your regular vacuum.

Like the WashG1, the iFloor 5 can vacuum and mop at once, so if you have have lots of hard, sealed flooring, you can cut your cleaning time in half. Also like the WashG1, it can’t be used to sterilise floors. However, it doesn’t clean in both directions like the WashG1 does, so it’s not quite as fast.

But it is effective. When we tested it, we found it be a very efficient cleaner. It cleans very close to the wall but it can’t get right into corners and, as it can’t lie flat, you’ll have to shift large, low pieces of furniture out of the way to clean underneath. It can be used with Tineco’s own cleaning solution, for extra cleaning power.

It’s motorised and feels light to use. You’ll get over 30 minutes of use in eco mode and over 20 minutes in max and it charges in 4-5 hours. Its large tanks are easy to empty and fill and we didn’t find that hair got tangled around the brush. It also has a self-cleaning mode.

If you’re looking for an effective vacuum and mop and don’t mind missing out on voice mode and smart features, this is a very good buy for its price point.

Bissell’s CrossWave HydroSteam Pet wet and dry vacuum is a corded cleaner, so if you don’t want to worry about battery life, it’s a good option. It’s also more powerful than many cordless competitors. You can use it dry, wet and in steam mode – for every aspect of pet clean-up on hard floors. It can even be used to clean up area rugs.

Its clean water tank is a comfortable 820ml and its dirty water tank (effectively) 640ml, so you won’t need to be emptying and refilling too often. Among its most useful features are headlights to illuminate water left on the floor, and a self-cleaning mode.

We found it to be an effective cleaner, with its steam mode giving it an edge over competitors, but it’s not flawless. At 5.67kg/12.5lbs, it’s heavy. It’s noisy in use as well, and you may not be able to rely entirely on the self-cleaning mode, which means it’s less of a time-saver than it could be.

The WashG1 can be used on any type of sealed hard flooring. Its main advantage is that you don’t need to vacuum and mop separately – you can do both at once. It’s manoeuvrable, fast to use as it cleans going back and forward, and there’s edge cleaning on one side that lets you get right up to the wall. But it can’t be used with very hot water or bleach, so it can’t sanitise floors.

What sets the WashG1 apart from other cleaners in this round-up is that it doesn’t use direct suction to pull dirt, hair and spills from the floor. Its rollers pick it all up, flick the solids into a tray, and the dirty water is pulled into a tank. This should mean fewer blockages, no nasty odour from the machine, and no need for you to pull clumps of hair from tubing or tanks inside the cleaner. There’s a self-cleaning programme for the rollers as well, but you will have to remove debris from the tray by hand – and it’s not pleasant.

The 1-litre clean and dirty water tanks are easy to remove, and they come off together, for quick refilling and emptying. A tank will give you around 35 minutes of cleaning time – enough Dyson reckons, to clean an entire tennis court.

Altogether, if you have almost all hard flooring in your home, it will be a huge time-saver. People with a mix of carpeting and hard flooring, however, will probably be better off with the V15s Submarine, the Bosch Unlimited 7 Aqua, or separate wet and dry vacuums altogether.

If you like what the Dyson V15s Submarine does but not its price and want a similar, modular cleaner with wet and dry attachments, the Bosch Unlimited 7 Aqua is one to consider.

It comes with a dry vacuuming head, a wet mopping head and three cleaning tools (short and long crevice, combi brush) that, together, will allow you to tackle any cleaning jobs in your home. Among the things that make it such a great cleaner are its handy features, such as the small ring inside the dustbin’s filter that Bosch calls the Rotation Clean, which spins to flick particles into the bin itself.

But battery life is limited. The maximum run time is 40 minutes – but that’s on the Eco setting with a tool. Attach a floor head on the same mode and the run decreases to 30 minutes. You’d expect a longer duration for a hard and soft floor cleaner. Swap Eco for Turbo and the run is 10 minutes.

We also found that the mopping head is best for little and often cleaning and isn’t the best for dealing with larger, sticky spills, which can be smeared around the floor.

In the UK, it’s called the Bissell SpotClean Cordless. In the US, it’s the Little Green Cordless. The difference between the two is that the UK model comes with a two-in-one sliding crevice tool, as well as the the Tough Stain tool and the HydroRinse tool (for self-cleaning) that both models have. Wherever you buy it, it’s a handy cordless portable vacuum that’ll help you to wet clean carpets, sofas, car interiors and more.

The chief problem of spot cleaners is that they can be heavy and bulky, especially when they’re filled with water. But this one weighs just 7.2lbs/3.4kg and is compact as well, which means it’s easy to take out to the car or use on stairs.

This vacuum can be used with cleaning fluid as well as water, for tough stains and messes. As it has a dirty water tank, it’ll suck up and store the wastewater produced during cleaning.

It has two cleaning modes: Eco and Turbo. We found that the Eco mode was sufficient for day-to-day cleaning, but you’ll need to switch to Turbo for serious stains. This does limit the running time to 20 minutes, after which you’ll need to let it charge for 4 hours.

We especially liked its HydroRinse tool, which allows you to flush out the vacuum’s interior, for easy maintenance.

The Flexi Pro has a simple, sleek design that may give it the edge over competing models, especially if you don’t have space to hide it away. It also has a longer battery life than many rivals, with a cleaning time of up to 50 minutes. It charges in 4 hours.

We also found that its design helps it clean right up to edges and that it can lie flat to get right under most pieces of furniture. We found that it gave a good clean and that its detection mode, which automatically adjusts power as needed, worked well.

It does have a self-cleaning cycle, but you might have to clean the roller yourself after tackling more serious spills.

The downside of its minimalist build is that its clean and dirty water tanks are built into the body of the cleaner and are thus fairly small (0.73 litres for clean and 0.43 litres for dirty). And, as they’re semi-opaque, you’ll have to remove them to check the water level.

The Gtech Orca has three cleaning modes: mopping (in which it both dispenses and draws up water), eco vacuum and max vacuum mode (in both of which it only draws up water). It doesn’t offer steam cleaning.

Charging takes around five hours from flat to full. From a fully charged battery, you’ll get 20 minutes of mopping, or 40 minutes of vacuuming time. While testing it, we found that was plenty of time to give floors a really good clean and were able to cover over 50m2 in under 15 minutes. Its suction is excellent and, while you won’t be using it as your day-to-day vac, it’ll handle any spills easily.

It has a 0.8-litre clean tank and a 0.7-litre waste tank, which are easy to fill, empty and clean. It has some advanced features to simplify use, including a digital touchscreen display that shows settings and, more importantly, a clear battery life indicator. It also has a self-cleaning mode that you can switch on when it’s docked.

The S5 Extreme is a bit more expensive than many other models here, but if you can get it on sale or when the price comes down, you won’t be disappointed. It can be used to vacuum and mop at the same time, is self-propelling and has voice guidance. It’s fairly heavy at 4.5kg/10lbs, so you won’t want to be carrying it up and down stairs. It has a digital display that shows suction mode, remaining battery life % – and has a colour coded ring that’ll show you when it encounters a lot of dirt.

Unlike many rivals, it has three cleaning modes: suction only for spills or drying wet floors; auto, which ramps up the power when it finds dirt; and max. You’ll get 35 minutes of cleaning time in auto mode and 28 minutes in max. Charging time is 4-5 hours. You can clean using the supplied cleaning fluid mixed with water, or using plain water alone. There’s no steam clean function.

The water tanks are large, at 800ml for clean and 700ml for dirty, but we found that you’ll need to empty the dirty water tank more often, especially when cleaning up wet spills. Also, as the clean tank is so long, you may need to fill it from a jug, as it might not fit under a tap.

We found it to be very effective on fresh spills but less so on hardened or ground-in dirt. It also struggled with hair, so you may find yourself needing to use an ordinary vacuum to get the worst up first. The smart features add little to the usefulness of the vacuum but its self-cleaning mode will save you an unpleasant job.

The Tineco Floor One S3 has come down in price since its launch and represents good value. It’s also self-propelling and weighs 4.5kg (9.9lbs). It has a 600ml clean water tank and a 500ml dirty water tank.

On top is a digital display with a battery life percentage indicator – it’s not quite as good as a Dyson display that’ll give you the time left in minutes, but it’s much better than bars.

It has a maximum runtime of 35 minutes and it takes 4 hours to charge. It has smart features as well, but we only regularly used the app to check the battery life while charging – which was very handy. It also has a (mutable) voice mode, which is useful if you’ve failed to attach a part properly. It cleans itself after use as well.

If you’re looking for a cheap wet and dry vacuum as a shop vac for a garage or another area of indoor/outdoor hard flooring, this Wessex model could be for you. It doesn’t clean floors with water or a cleaning solution. Instead, it’s just there for vacuuming up wet spills, dust and chunky debris.

It comes in three sizes: 18, 20 and 30 litres. We tested the 18-litre model on sawdust, dust, dirt, mud and on a water leak and found it to be powerful and effective. It has 18,000Pa of suction and comes with a main brush head, crevice tool and hose adapter that’ll connect to the outlet of some power tools. It has a 1.5m hose and 5m power cable.

You can use it on wet or dry spills but bear in mind that you’ll have to add or remove the bag, filter and a locking nut depending on the task, so it’s not as simple to use as pricier models. You can also use it as a blower, but that also requires adjustments.

As you’d expect from its price point, there are compromises where the build quality is concerned. It’s almost entirely plastic, there’s no angle adjustment on the floor brush and its bags are made from not-very-sturdy paper. You’ll be able to replace them with universal bags, although you can buy ones made for the vacuum from Toolstation for £4.98 for a three-pack.

This isn’t a buy-it-for-life model, but if you need something cheap, it’s a good option.